Oct. 8, 2000

Exodus 12

How God Uses the Unusual to Accomplish the Inconceivable!

  1. Introduction
    1. Have you ever heard of somebody doing something so ridiculous or stupid that you couldn’t believe it? How about the guys who tried to steal an ATM machine by pulling it out of the wall with their truck only to leave their bumper with license plate attached behind? Or about the bank robber who wrote the hold-up note on his own deposit slip? Some things in life just seem too absurd for words.
    2. Vaclav Havel, a Czech playwright, wrote, Modern man must descend beyond the spiral of his own absurdity to the lowest point; only then can he look beyond it. It is obviously impossible to get around it, jump over it, or simply avoid it. John Stuart Mill wrote, That which seems the height of absurdity in one generation often becomes the height of wisdom in the next. And Benjamin Franklin wrote, There is nothing so absurd as knowledge spun too fine. You know, the Israelites found themselves in an absurd situation. Here they were, bound in slavery by one of the world’s foremost military powers, demanding to be released from that captivity. Why? Because their God demanded it. And because their God showed His power to the Egyptians through several devastating plagues. But now God was going to require them to do something that seemed unusual, even absurd. But what came out of their obedience brought the salvation of the whole world.
  1. Scripture Passage

A. Exodus 12:1-30 - The LORD said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt, 2 "This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year. 3 Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to take a lamb for his family, one for each household. 4 If any household is too small for a whole lamb, they must share one with their nearest neighbor, having taken into account the number of people there are. You are to determine the amount of lamb needed in accordance with what each person will eat. 5 The animals you choose must be year-old males without defect, and you may take them from the sheep or the goats. 6 Take care of them until the fourteenth day of the month, when all the people of the community of Israel must slaughter them at twilight. 7 Then they are to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the doorframes of the houses where they eat the lambs. 8 That same night they are to eat the meat roasted over the fire, along with bitter herbs, and bread made without yeast. 9 Do not eat the meat raw or cooked in water, but roast it over the fire—head, legs and inner parts. 10 Do not leave any of it till morning; if some is left till morning, you must burn it. 11 This is how you are to eat it: with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand. Eat it in haste; it is the LORD’s Passover.12 "On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn—both men and animals—and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the LORD. 13 The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt. 14 "This is a day you are to commemorate; for the generations to come you shall celebrate it as a festival to the LORD—a lasting ordinance. 15 For seven days you are to eat bread made without yeast. On the first day remove the yeast from your houses, for whoever eats anything with yeast in it from the first day through the seventh must be cut off from Israel. 16 On the first day hold a sacred assembly, and another one on the seventh day. Do no work at all on these days, except to prepare food for everyone to eat—that is all you may do. 17 "Celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread, because it was on this very day that I brought your divisions out of Egypt. Celebrate this day as a lasting ordinance for the generations to come. 18 In the first month you are to eat bread made without yeast, from the evening of the fourteenth day until the evening of the twenty-first day. 19 For seven days no yeast is to be found in your houses. And whoever eats anything with yeast in it must be cut off from the community of Israel, whether he is an alien or native-born. 20 Eat nothing made with yeast. Wherever you live, you must eat unleavened bread." 21 Then Moses summoned all the elders of Israel and said to them, "Go at once and select the animals for your families and slaughter the Passover lamb. 22 Take a bunch of hyssop, dip it into the blood in the basin and put some of the blood on the top and on both sides of the doorframe. Not one of you shall go out the door of his house until morning. 23 When the LORD goes through the land to strike down the Egyptians, he will see the blood on the top and sides of the doorframe and will pass over that doorway, and he will not permit the destroyer to enter your houses and strike you down. 24 "Obey these instructions as a lasting ordinance for you and your descendants. 25 When you enter the land that the LORD will give you as he promised, observe this ceremony. 26 And when your children ask you, ‘What does this ceremony mean to you?’ 27 then tell them, ‘It is the Passover sacrifice to the LORD, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt and spared our homes when he struck down the Egyptians.’" Then the people bowed down and worshiped. 28 The Israelites did just what the LORD commanded Moses and Aaron. 29 At midnight the LORD struck down all the firstborn in Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh, who sat on the throne, to the firstborn of the prisoner, who was in the dungeon, and the firstborn of all the livestock as well. 30 Pharaoh and all his officials and all the Egyptians got up during the night, and there was loud wailing in Egypt, for there was not a house without someone dead.
    1. Now let’s think about this for a minute. God tells Moses that His Passover was to be so significant that the whole calendar was to be set by it. Fine, no problem with that. Then God says that a lamb is to be sacrificed in each house. But then God asks something a little unusual. He tells them to put the blood of the lamb on the sides and top of the doorframe of the entrance to each house. All to protect them from the coming plague.
    2. Then the instructions begin to become very different!
  1. An Unusual Set of Instructions
    1. Tell everyone to find a lamb without spot or blemish. Tell them to take care of it for four days. Just long enough for the family to begin to get attached to it. Okay so far. A little of the beaten path, but okay so far. Tell everyone to slaughter their lamb at twilight. Then spread the blood on the doorframe. Then roast the lamb and eat it. No eating it raw, no boiling it, no you’ve got to roast it. And one more thing – eat it dressed, standing up, with bitter herbs and unleavened bread. And you have to burn the leftovers.
    2. Timeout! Wait a minute! Wouldn’t it be simpler to do something else?! We don’t get to kill the thing until twilight, which in March is close to seven. Then we have to take a couple of hours or so to roast it, eat bitter herbs and tasteless bread with it, and burn what’s left, in spite of our hard work? On top of that our house is going to stink like blood the whole time we’re doing this, and we have to be dressed to travel and holding our staffs? Wouldn’t it be easier to just go to McCamel’s, or Lamb-in-the-box, or Lambs-R-Us? In our twenty-first century sophisticated mentality, the unusual but simple often is the last thing we think of. If it’s not convenient or easy, many times we won’t do it!
    3. So what did the people of Israel do? Even though the instructions were far from their idea of rescue, verses 27 and 28 tell us they did two things: they bowed down and worshiped, and they did just what the Lord commanded Moses and Aaron. They had just seen awesome displays of God’s power and believed that God was as good as His word. So they obeyed.
    4. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, Everybody can be great…because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love. God’s great demonstrations of His love for them gave the Israelites all the grace they needed to do even the unusual when God told them to do it.
  1. The Lamb of God
    1. There is another significant Lamb in the Bible. His name is Jesus. John the Baptist, in John 1:29, said, "Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!"

B. Isaiah 53:1-7 says, Who has believed our message

and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?

2 He grew up before him like a tender shoot,

and like a root out of dry ground.

He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,

nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

3 He was despised and rejected by men,

a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.

Like one from whom men hide their faces

he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

4 Surely he took up our infirmities

and carried our sorrows,

yet we considered him stricken by God,

smitten by him, and afflicted.

5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,

he was crushed for our iniquities;

the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,

and by his wounds we are healed.

6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray,

each of us has turned to his own way;

and the LORD has laid on him

the iniquity of us all.

7 He was oppressed and afflicted,

yet he did not open his mouth;

he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,

and as a sheep before her shearers is silent,

so he did not open his mouth.

C. Many of us know about Jesus, the Lamb that was slain for our sins. Many of us know Him personally, or have known Him in the past. The problem is that we limit what He can do in our lives because of our lack of belief. The Israelites saw the mighty power of God on their behalf, and they bowed down, worshiped God, and did exactly what He had instructed. We have all seen the mighty power of God in our own lives. For some of us, it’s been through deliverance from some really bad situations. For others, it’s been through a radical change in our behavior. For others, it’s been through a literally life-saving experience. Whatever it is, the mere fact that we are here this morning shows us that God has shown His mighty power in our lives. He took people who were hostile to Him and who were His enemies because of sin and brought them into His house. Why? Because He loves us with the same love He loved the Israelites with. A powerful love that works through seemingly unusual circumstances to deliver us from the power of sin over our lives!
  1. Application
    1. Do you remember what the occasion was when Jesus broke the bread and drank the wine with His disciples the night He was arrested? The Passover celebration. Was that a coincidence? Absolutely not. There is no such thing as a coincidence when God’s involved! God planned it that way for a reason. Jesus is our Passover Lamb, the one that keeps the destroyer from killing our souls through sin.
    2. Through the demonstration of God’s power in the plagues against Egypt, the Israelites apparently had any notion of disobedience against God driven from their hearts and minds. Through the demonstration of God’s power in sending His Son as the sacrificial Lamb for our sins, He can drive any notion of disobedience out of our hearts and minds. It’s a matter of whether or not we want Him to. Whether or not we want to be filled with His Spirit. Whether or not we want to obey Him.
    3. As we enter into our time of communion, every last one of us has to consider whether or not there is any area in our lives where we are not letting God’s power shine through. If there is any area in our hearts and minds where we are not obeying Him. Through the celebration of communion, we have an opportunity to bow down and worship Him, then go out from here and obey Him in every area of our lives. Communion is not the only way we can do this, but the Bible also has warnings against partaking in the Lord’s Supper in a manner unworthy of Him. And if there is any area of your life where you refuse to obey Him, that qualifies you as partaking in an unworthy manner.
  1. Communion
    1. Before we share the elements, we’re going to take a few moments to listen to whatever God through the Holy Spirit is saying to each one of us. Now’s the time to make sure there is nothing between you and God. Let’s take just a few moments.
    2. With every head bowed and every eye closed, if God has shown you any area of your life that He wants you to obey Him in, please come forward now and pray. A physical act puts the action into commitment. If God’s been speaking to you, please come forward and pray.
    3. Celebration of communion.

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